Category Archives: Painting Craft

TONIGHT! January 28th, 2015 from 9pm until midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Paint-a-Snowflake
$3 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink specials, sometimes it’s The Lyla, other times, it’s something else, only your bartender knows for sure!

Winter’s little messengers,
Gently floating from above,
Tiny white medallions pure,
Manifest to you… sort of…

Each so perfect, icy cold,
Beautifying Winter’s face
But not in LA, please behold
This city brings no single trace.

So much for a Los Angeles snow poem, the slopes are open up in Mammoth, Bear Mountain, and Mt. Baldy’s got 2 out of 4 lifts open, but only on weekends. Down here in the city we’ve got the most chintzy little winter reminders, everyone out in Boston thinks we’re the biggest winter weenies they’ve ever seen! While the east is getting all the snowflakes, I thought we’d show some snow love and make some out here to keep us company.

I’ll give you some tape and some time. Make a snowflake with the tape, paint over it with wintry colors, peel off the tape and WOW you have a snowflake! Make tiny ones, big ones, however many you want! We’ve never done this before, I’m excited to see what flakes shall take form.

See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com
www.akbarsilverlake.com

This Wednesday January 14th, 2015 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT! [Santa Anas Edition] 
Project: Abstract Paint-by-Number Panels
$3 processing fee, please
$4 Drink special: Ginger Beer and Whiskey! The Lyla – Unleash the Queen. 

This week’s project is a celebrated CraftNight classic. Paint-by-number projects are divided up into small panels, bottles of numbered paint that don’t correspond to the packaged paint-by-number paint order, and voila: you will make your very own abstract painting. You are given little blue numbered borders on these chip board paint-by-numbers, and contrary to the instructions, you are encouraged to do what you like with the borders. This project is CraftNight’s medication on creative limits.

I see people wrestling with creative limits all the time at CraftNight. I’ve heard such declarations:

• Crafts aren’t practical
• Art is only for experts or crazy people
• Making things is hard
• Nobody wants to talk to me
• Leisure time is useless
• My craft will look like a baby made it

These limits are as true or false as you wish to experience them.
Maybe what you make at CraftNight will look like a baby made it… is that so bad?
Every human builds a tiny “self-imposed captivity” for their sanity based on existing in the uncontainable size of the world and the even more endless reach of outer space.
Self-imposed limits can keep you from licking the elbow of a stranger in the checkstand at the grocery store, not bad!
But sometimes, limits can get fixed or extreme, causing us to curl inward, forgetting to be spontaneous, helpful, and kind. The latter form of extreme limitations means you stop calling old friends because it “takes too long”, or you don’t look at the sunset because it’s a “waste of time.”

That’s why there will be no paint-by-number police at CraftNight this Wednesday. Ignore the lines, the numbers, the sequence of colors, GO FOR IT! As you careen out of control or merely color in the borders of each outlined mini canvas, enjoy the liberation of unbridled expression and exploration. Some limits are great, some are hogwash, the thing is to inspect your limits regularly and do maintenance according to your life. Regular check-ins on your personal limitations can help avoid stagnant restrictions on your psyche as well as “boring and crotchety” syndrome.

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

*** UPCOMING JANUARY 7th at AKBAR ***
BET YER BOTTOM BINGO
8pm to 10pm
50 Cents a Card
Girls, Boys, Balls, Numbers, PRIZES!!!

TONIGHT! December 17th, 2014 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!
Project: Seasonal Photo Holder Thinger (I’m bringin’ the Poloroid!)
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink Special “The Lyla” for the discerning Mary

***NOW PLAYING*** SparkleBlob’s Jingle-Belling on the Outskirts of Greatness tickets are going fast, this is the last weekend, come see us, get a hot buttered rum and puppets in your face! www.sparkleblob.org ***NEXT WEEK*** Bet Yer Bottom Bingo Holiday Edition!!! OMG Holiday Prizes and your favorite guys, gals, balls and fancy prizes! 50 cents a card, December 23rd!

You shopped all over Los Angeles, you visited everywhere and looked at everything and couldn’t find that one perfect gift, and that’s because it’s right here at Akbar on the corner of Sunset and Fountain.

I have these lovely deluxe seasonal-themed wooden photo holders that you can paint and decorate with all the emotion and verve that your brain can make! AND I brought the polaroid, so for ONE extra dollar, I’ll take your photo looking extra cute and BLAM-OH, you have a gift!

Who doesn’t want a picture of you? This gift is fool proof, it’s gorgeous, it’s practical, it’s home made. It’s what Xmas is all about, it’s warm, it’s cozy, if you give someone this gift and they get all snarky, give me their address. Because if they don’t want a photo of you, I’m marching over there myself and taking the present AWAY and replacing it with a ROCK.

The end of the year is fraught with the usual precarious aspects of the underlying social landscape, haunting us with ever-present avarice, bitterness, melancholiness and weirdness and all the other things that can crunch up our minds this time of year.

Nobody’s asking you to walk away from all that!

But if you desire seasonal cheer in a bar tonight, we’ll be here to give you a hug and ask you to work with your hands and your heart and make something that snark forgot.

This is our LAST CRAFT of 2014, we will see you on the other side of the calendar, January 7th, 2015

See you at the Craft Table, JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com